NK Investigative Report

North Korea Investigative Report

Week 2 - Famine (Part I)

Perhaps the greatest human catastrophe of our generation has claimed more lives than the famines in Ethiopia and Somalia combined, yet many are unaware of this ongoing disaster.

An estimated 2-5 million people (out of 22 million) have died in a devastating famine in North Korea since it began in the mid-1990s. North Korean refugees we talked to said that at the height of the famine in 1997, there weren't enough coffins for all the dead. Trucks drove through the villages every morning to pick up scores of dead bodies on the streets. People ate grass and stripped off bark from trees for food. Children were going blind because of malnutrition. And perhaps most disturbing, every refugee we talked to had stories of people eating others in their villages.

Why haven't we more heard about it? North Korea is the most reclusive country in the world, restricting and distorting information about this tragedy. The world has relied on reports leaking out of North Korea through refugees in northern China. In this part of the NK Investigative Report, we look at the extent and causes of the famine.

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